Rat Pedigree Practice with Key

Rats can produce a lot more offspring than humans, making a pedigree more difficult to manage. A researcher has four female white rats named April, May, June, and July. One night, the cage was left open in the lab and a brown rat got into the female's cage. Six weeks later, the rats had litters of babies of varying colors. Two of the offspring managed to reproduce before the researcher was able to sort out the mess. Determine genotypes of the rats in this pedigree.

rat pedigree


Note that the offspring of the first cross between Manny and each female will produce either albino offspring (represented by the gray squares) or brown offspring that are heterozygous (Aa).

In the second generation offspring, it is unknown whether the brown offspring inherited an albino allele.

rat pedigree